It wasn’t quite what we were expecting. Gathered at the graveside after a cathartic funeral service, all eyes were on the officiating priest as he turned to my cousin: “A wonderful eulogy ... Definitely in my top 10. Towards the top of it actually.”
Everyone managed a smile – and even a grateful laugh to relieve the tension. The eulogy for his grandfather had indeed been perfectly judged, written and delivered with feeling and aplomb.
But this “feedback” also let us in on something quite separate from the family occasion. The vicar’s candid appraisal meant we were confronted by his existence as a professional – the expert in public speaking beneath the cassock.
The rest of us might only set foot in church to mark the “hatch, match and dispatch”. But for the clergy it’s a workplace – the stage on which they perform week in, week out. Funerals and other rituals are moments of great personal significance and emotion but also, let’s face it, a public speaking nightmare – thrusting untrained amateurs into a spotlight usually reserved for professional orators.
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There’s a reason why the funeral oration is a great set piece of rhetoric, from Pericles to Shakespeare’s Mark Anthony with his “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” (surely the all-time number one).
It’s because the speaker is charged with delivering a performance that both they and the deceased will be judged on. Thucydides puts these words into Pericles’s mouth to describe the jeopardy of such a moment: a person’s reputation after death is “imperilled on the eloquence or want of eloquence of one, and their virtues believed or not as he spoke well or ill”.
Of course, the vicar’s compliment led to further questions. Did he also have a top 10 of wedding speeches? What about Christenings? And maybe a corresponding, worst-ever list? “First place, the time I nearly drowned the baby in the font. Second, the ex-wife objecting to the marriage, and third, fisticuffs in the pews.”
As we shared a consoling glass of fizz afterwards, another cousin, the grandson of a church minister, provided his own insight: when men (and women, having reached the heights of Church of England hierarchy) of the cloth gather, they do indeed compare notes on the best and worst of these occasions. What a mental picture!
No wonder the classified sections of magazines carry discreet adverts for occasional speechwriters – it’s high stakes. And there must be a lot of suspiciously fluent AI-generated funeral speeches these days, if we go by search results that promise a “heartfelt tribute in minutes”.
I’m unconvinced by such a homogenising, impersonal method. When my darling Dad died a couple of years ago, I found the process of composing the eulogy emotionally helpful: asking people for their most characteristic memories of him then cramming as much of it as possible on to the page.
Getting through it on the day, of course, is another matter – and made rather more anxiety-inducing by the idea of the clergy rating your delivery.
The appraisals stretch from the sacred to the profane, too. A talented political speech writer of my acquaintance likes to recount tales of his best, most carefully crafted lines being fluffed by MPs – especially jokes that fell flat due to duff timing.
Sadly, all this probably offers the opposite of a morale boost to readers writing a tricky wedding speech, let alone the recently bereaved drafting a eulogy. Now you know that the priest or celebrant, spiritual or secular, may be mentally ranking the performance – and will describe it to colleagues if you ace or flunk it.
We all would, though, I bet. It feels very natural for people on the same path in life to “talk shop” and share best and worst anecdotes. Consider this French song I found quoted in a novel: “Quand un Vicomte rencontre un autre Vicomte, qu’est-ce qu’ils se racontent? Des histoires de Vicomtes!”
Which we could translate, in an attempt to keep a bit of the lilting rhyme, as: “When viscounts gather, of what do they blather? Why, of viscounts, together!”
If French viscounts congregate, so will vicars. And speechwriters. Their judgment may be daunting for those of us unused to the lectern – but if you pull it off, just think, you might make the pulpit panel’s top 10. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
